Pooper-scooper Bush on life after the White House

There is a moment in the life of most former world leaders when the reality of losing office finally hits home.

For George W Bush that moment came when Barney the dog made an unwelcome deposit on a neighbourhood pavement.

Bush – who left the White House just over four months ago – told a graduating high school class in New Mexico this week that his readjustment to a normal existence had been brought sharply into relief while taking the dog for a walk and encountering the hazards that entails.

"I realised this was the first time I'd been walking in a neighbourhood for 14 years," he said, according to the Roswell Daily Record. "It's not all that hard, by the way. You take one step, and then you take another."

He said this new life became complicated when his Scottish terrier made a mess. "And there I was, former president of the United States of America, with a plastic bag on my hand," he recalled. "Life is returning back to normal."

While Bush has largely ducked out of sight, his former second-in-command, Dick Cheney, has become a chief spokesman for the Republican opposition to Barack Obama, and his efforts to undo Bush's work.

Bush left office as one of the least popular presidents in American history, and aides say he does not want to detract attention from his successor. By contrast, Bill Clinton travelled the world for his philanthropic endeavours and campaigned for his wife, Hillary, in her bid for the White House.

Since returning to Texas, Bush has given no television interviews and few speeches, preferring the comfort of the wealthy, solidly conservative enclave in Dallas to the rough-and-tumble political world he inhabited for more than a decade.

On Thursday, a large, friendly crowd received the former president in heavily Republican Artesia, a crossroads town of about 10,500 people.

"I no longer feel that great sense of responsibility that I had when I was in the Oval office," he told Artesia high school seniors. "And frankly, it's a liberating feeling."